Wrong call

If the revival of the monsoon in August dispelled fears of a drought similar to the one in 2002, September seems to have changed the mood once again.

There has been a prolonged break in the monsoon this month in several agriculturally important areas, giving policy-makers cause for concern. Contrary to what the India Meteorological Department (IMD) had predicted in June, the overall rainfall pattern this season is turning out to be somewhat similar to 2002.

In that year, the agriculturally crucial month of July went totally dry, followed by copious rainfall in August and an indifferent monsoon in September.

This is how the script has unfolded this year, too. The overall rainfall deficiency is expected to be close to 15 per cent""not much better than the 19 per cent reported in 2002. Also, the deficiency is over 20 per cent in nearly 43 per cent of the districts, and over 60 per cent in another 4 per cent.

In this scenario, it is futile to expect farm production to register much growth. The government has already conceded that foodgrain output in the current kharif season will be down by 7.5 per cent. Some farm experts believe the deficit could be greater.

The government believes that any kharif loss can be made up in the rabi season, but this does not carry conviction. The fixing of the rabi foodgrain target at 135 million tonnes seems optimistic, given the fact that rabi production has seldom touched even 101 million tonnes in the past. Fortunately, the country's economy has acquired the resilience to absorb such shocks.

The 2002 drought was managed without much difficulty at the macro-economic level, though there was enormous human suffering and animal loss. This year, too, there is a comfortable level of food stocks.

The shrinking share of crop production in agricultural GDP is another relevant factor. A significant part of the agricultural GDP now comes from sectors like animal husbandry, poultry, fisheries, forestry and the like, which will not be so badly affected as crop output.

This year's experience has once again exposed the shortcomings of the IMD in long-range weather forecasting. In its monsoon forecast update issued at the end of June (one month into the monsoon season), IMD had categorically stated that rainfall would be 100 per cent normal and well distributed.

Events unfolded differently. Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal has blame for this on the lack of the necessary wherewithal, such as observation and communication networks, data processing systems, and numerical weather prediction models.

But these problems could not have surfaced suddenly; why has no corrective action been taken all these years? The government should do whatever is required so that weather forecasting does not go badly wrong again.